The Regime Sheffield: First photos emerge of HBO drama starring Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant being filmed

The HBO miniseries called The Regime is being filmed around Sheffield and elsewhere in South Yorkshire. These photos, shared on Twitter by @steelcitysnaps, show how parts of the city have been dressed up for the dystopian drama, also featuring the Oscar-nominated actor Andrea Riseborough.

Some of the shots taken yesterday around an empty building site on Hoyle Street, in Shalesmoor, which is home to an old cementation furnace, show two black armoured vehicles, a poster depicting gun-toting soldiers, and a tattered flag fluttering in the breeze. The Steel City Snapper told how filming had been taking place on Ellis Street, with Meadow Street, Doncaster Street and Shepherd Street all closed for filming too.

Crews were today still packing up at Sheffield Botanical Gardens, which had been closed to the public on Wednesday and Thursday, and where Kate Winslet was seen yesterday. The props still visible there were in stark contrast to the more desolate set created in Shalesmoor, with statues, a floral canopy, a golden lectern and a wooden cart among the items being removed.

Filming for the drama, which depicts a year within the palace of a crumbling Middle European authoritarian regime, is also understood to have been taking place at Wentworth Woodhouse in Rotherham.

HBO has said The Regime is based on the story of Romania's former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and modern day Russia and its imprisoned opposition politicians. Winslet reportedly plays the Chancellor struggling to hold on to power, with Riseborough as her right-hand woman and Grant as the liberal leader of Winslet’s political opposition, whose recent imprisonment has triggered large-scale public protests.

The series was created by Will Tracy and is directed by Stephen Frears. It is slated to hit screens in 2024.